Here's a mini review of Little Noah: Scion of Paradise.
First of all the game is roguelite action platformer action game beat em up where you play an alchemist and use these creatures to attack in your place. You crash land on this floating island and can rebuild and do other base building stuff there. This is where you use crystals earned from runs to get things. I would recommend fast tracking the main one cause the 2nd upgrade allows you to use this dash attack, which is essential. So there is a story about the girl looking for her father and she meets a talking cat and you go deeper and deeper to get to the bottom of things. Overall the story is nothing special, but the characters are OK enough.
The graphics are relatively decent. They remind me of Exist Archive with cartoony looking characters and basic but bright environments. The music is alright just being some generic adventure music with like synthesized instruments. The voices are OK when they come out for important scenes. The action sounds alright, though some of the attacks don't have that oomph. 6/10
The gameplay gets very repetitive very quickly. The backgrounds barely change and aren't too different across the three main environments. The gameplay reminds me of an old indie game Fairy Bloom Freesia. This one is a lot better and controls better, but feels repetitive in combat like that one gets to be. You can set Liliputs (the main creatures that attack), but it's a lot of button mashing. There is a dash as well, but it's not an invincibility one, so you dash away or above things. Once you unlock it you can get a homing attack as well. If you have enough Liliputs some can be set as skills to be used on cooldown. Every room has a gimmick which end up being battle room, treasure room, gem room for upgrades, shop, mini game room where you have to destroy objects for chest (similar to target mode in Smash), and obstacle course to get a treasure at the end. There are a few more but these are the main ones. You go around a 2D plane similar to Exist Archive and each room can be seen from the map. It's just a lot of battles and eventually you move to the next area and every 2 areas has a mini boss or main boss. These require learning their moves, unless you burst them down immediately. They can be challenging, but after playing a few areas you can cruise through all the mini bosses (I had problems with one of them) and 2 of the main bosses. Frankly it got old, but I always try to beat them. I give gameplay a 7/10.
I should mention the controls are excellent on the PS4 controller. I much prefer it to the PS5 controller, although I'm playing the game on the PS5. The triggers handle better for the homing attacks, so I'd recommend using the controller for the system it came out on.
Overall I beat the game in 7 hours and had about 70% of all achievements in game and upgrades in game by this point. I had about 40% of the trophies unlocked. I would guess another 3 hours I'd get all the achievements in game other than beating hell mode, which becomes available once you beat the game. In this mode any hit kills you and it sounds like torture. Overall the game is very, very average, but is recommended probably around the $7.50 range or so, which is about 60-70 percent off. It's not a great game, but more of a time waster. I know people have been asking about this game, so hopefully this review helps them out. 6.5/10
